Re: Translating "yes" and "no" as answers to specific questions

["Christian Rose" <menthos gnome org>]

On 4/7/08, Sean Burke <leftmostcat gmail com> wrote:
> Scríobh Claude Paroz:
> > Couldn't you find a way to rephrase the question in the translation so
>  > as the answer is always the generic yes and no?
>
>  Speaking for Irish, I'm not sure this is always possible, even in a
>  stilted fashion (as Thomas mentions). The best approximations to "Yes"
>  and "No" that the Irish translators (for Firefox and KDE as well) have
>  come up with so far translate as "It is" and "It isn't". It would
>  certainly make every yes-or-no question awkward and I'm certain there
>  are a few that can't be rephrased into something both sensible and correct.
>
>  For that matter, this problem isn't isolated to GTK+ software. This same
>  problem exists in KDE. It seems to me like it would be better to address
>  this outside of GTK+ but this again brings up the problem of "Is this
>  worth it for the Celtic languages alone?" Certainly it's more than two
>  but not by much. Still, the resulting translations are very awkward and
>  I think it needs to be addressed somehow. If accurate translations are
>  impossible, something's wrong. Perhaps a more generic solution could be
>  found that fixes similar problems in other languages.

In any case, as already pointed out, this is not a GTK+ nor QT
specific problem, so the best place to address this is in upstream
gettext itself, if possible. That way, if a solution can be found, all
projects will eventually have the possibility to benefit from this and
build upon a gettext solution.

So please describe the problem on the mailing list that the gettext
developers use (https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translation-i18n).
I've found the gettext developers to be very responsive to feedback
and suggestions.


Christian